A Digital Rebuke For Bad E-MailA Digital Rebuke For Bad E-Mail

Entrust's server-side software scans outgoing messages that may run afoul of company policy or the law; Banking and health care are target markets.

Thomas Claburn, Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

October 8, 2004

2 Min Read
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The surge of spam and computer viruses makes it easy to forget that internal E-mails are sometimes as problematic as external ones.

Entrust Inc., an identity-management software company, recently started shipping an appliance server that can bring companies' E-mail messages up to snuff with policies and regulations. It also scans E-mail coming into a company's computers.

Entrust's Entelligence Compliance Server can help administrators deal with offensive language, spam, or legal requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It sniffs out the contents of messages and sends them back to their senders for re-consideration or quarantines them for a privacy officer to review. The Linux-based server also automatically encrypts messages with content its software deems sensitive, such as medical information about a patient, before it leaves a company's walls. "Clearly, there are threats from the outside, and people are annoyed by the amount of spam coming into the organization," says Leah MacMillan, VP of secure messaging at Entrust. "But there's also a great concern about the kind of information that's leaving."

Banks and health-care companies have the most need for such a tool, says Masha Khmartseva, an analyst at market researcher the Radicati Group. "Compliance is really huge right now. At the very top are companies in the financial industry and health care. They really don't have a choice. They have to deploy one of those solutions."

The problem, however, is that regulatory requirements aren't always clear. These laws don't tell you exactly what to do and how to do it, or what kinds of products to use, Khmartseva says. "It can be confusing to a lot of companies. That's why a lot of them are still thinking about deploying those solutions, even though they're already required to do so."

Some of the methods companies use to check E-mail for policy and regulatory compliance, such as hiring staff to review outbound messages, get put in place only after a violation, MacMillan says. "We can capture E-mail as it leaves the organization and before a violation occurs, so you can take the appropriate action."

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About the Author

Thomas Claburn

Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, information, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful master's degree in film production. He wrote the original treatment for 3DO's Killing Time, a short story that appeared in On Spec, and the screenplay for an independent film called The Hanged Man, which he would later direct. He's the author of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and a sadly neglected blog, Lot 49. His iPhone game, Blocfall, is available through the iTunes App Store. His wife is a talented jazz singer; he does not sing, which is for the best.

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